Dome plotters challenge convictions

The Court of Appeal in London is to hear legal challenges by three of the men found guilty of plotting to carry out the biggest robbery in UK history - the planned snatch of £200 million worth of diamonds from the Millennium Dome.

The raid on November 7, 2000, was foiled when more than 100 armed police officers lay in wait as the gang ram-raided their way into the Thames-side tourist attraction on a JCB earthmover.

The raiders, armed with sledgehammers, a nail gun, ammonia and smoke grenades, were caught red handed by armed police inches away from seizing jewels from the De Beers diamond exhibition vault.

The ringleaders, Raymond Betson, 41, from Chatham, Kent, and William Cockram, 50, from Catford, south-east London, were each jailed for 18 years at the Old Bailey in February last year for conspiracy to rob.

Robert Adams, 59, of no fixed address, and Aldo Ciarrocchi, 33, of Balaclava Road, Bermondsey, south east London, were sentenced to 15 years each.

Betson and Cockram were today challenging their convictions and sentences.

Ciarrocchi was appealing only against his jail term.

No appeal by Adams is currently before the court.

Lawyers for Betson and Cockram argue that, if they were to be convicted of anything, it should have been the lesser offence of conspiracy to steal.

The Court of Appeal has already dismissed an appeal by a fifth man, Kevin Meredith, 36, against his five-year sentence for conspiracy to steal. Meredith had been hired at the last moment to take the other four in a speedboat across the River Thames had the raid succeeded.